Give Them Ballots

In February 2026, US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon declared, “American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research—not influencing elections.” Unfortunately, her definition of “influencing” appears expansive and seems to extend to nonpartisan activities such as on-campus voter registration drives designed to encourage civic engagement among students. 

The statement came in a press release announcing a Department of Education investigation into the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE). NSLVE is a nonpartisan research initiative that tracks student voter participation; colleges and universities use its data to develop effective engagement strategies. The investigation extends to NSLVE’s sponsor, Tufts University, and the National Student Clearinghouse, which provides authoritative enrollment data for NSLVE’s analysis of student civic participation. The department has also threatened to revoke funding for the thousand-plus institutions participating in NSLVE. 

The Education Department’s investigation centers on whether NSLVE violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The investigation results are not yet available, but NSLVE says claims of such violations are unsubstantiated and false. Nonetheless, in response to the investigation, NSLVE is delaying distribution of data from the 2024 election cycle, and the Clearinghouse has announced it will no longer participate, leaving the entire project on the brink of collapse.

The NSLVE episode is symptomatic of a broader assault on student voting that colleges and universities must resist. Helping students exercise the franchise is not political; it is foundational to higher education’s mission. Liberal education and democracy share the same core purpose of cultivating citizens capable of reasoned judgment, open inquiry, and collective responsibility. When students learn to think critically, engage across differences, and see themselves as participants in a shared civic life, they practice democracy in its truest sense. Encouraging them to vote is simply an extension of that education, affirming that knowledge and citizenship are inseparable and that the vitality of both depends on active engagement.

From Benjamin Franklin to US leaders and educators in the present day, thinkers and public leaders have consistently affirmed the link between higher education and democracy. At the end of World War II, a landmark reform report by the Truman Commission described higher education as a “carrier of democratic values, ideals, and process” and called for expanded access to colleges and universities as a foundation for engaged citizenship. As former Yale University President Bartlett Giamatti wrote in his 1981 book, The University and the Public Interest, “How we choose to believe and speak and treat others, how we choose a civic role for ourselves, is the deepest purpose of a liberal education and of the act of teaching.”

Almost every US college and university invokes some sense of civic purpose in its mission statement or statement of educational objectives. Harvard College seeks to “educate the citizens and citizen-leaders of our society.” The University System of Maryland (USM) states in its strategic plan that “educating for democracy is an essential part of USM’s mission. . . . [Education] prepares students to be responsible citizens, contribute to the civic health of their communities, and preserve our democracy.” West Texas A&M University’s mission similarly focuses on “preparing the next generation of citizens in Texas, the nation, and the world.”

Taken together, these statements reflect a shared understanding across institutions that higher education plays a vital role in preparing students for civic life. Yet that long-standing consensus is increasingly at odds with federal policy. Since taking office in January 2025, the second Trump administration has constrained how colleges and universities can support student civic engagement. For instance, in August 2025, the administration sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges and universities prohibiting them from spending federal work study funds on nonpartisan voter registration and associated activities. The letter also urged institutions to issue warnings to potential student registrants about the consequences of providing inaccurate information.

Looming federal threats include the proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require in-person proof of citizenship to register to vote. For most people, this would mean presenting a passport or birth certificate, documents many college students may not possess or have readily available while away from home. If Congress does not pass the SAVE Act, the administration has indicated that it will pursue executive action to impose stricter proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration. 

States are also passing laws that target or hinder young voters, particularly college students. By the 2024 election, twenty-seven states had enacted new laws that disproportionately affect college students, and states have passed additional laws since then. Supporters of these laws argue that the measures are needed to prevent voter fraud, strengthen election integrity, and ensure that only eligible citizens cast ballots, even though documented cases of election fraud are exceedingly rare. 

The laws include new restrictions on absentee ballots, mail-in voting, and same-day registration. New Hampshire, Idaho, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Indiana, and other states have banned student IDs as valid voter IDs, disadvantaging out-of-state students and those without local IDs. State and local election boards have removed early and regular voting sites on college campuses, including a voting site at North Carolina A&T State University, the nation’s largest historically Black college. Florida and Mississippi now require voters to present proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate. Other states are poised to follow suit, particularly if the SAVE Act fails.

If forming engaged citizens is central to the mission of US institutions of higher education, then campuses must prioritize promoting and defending students’ ability to exercise the most fundamental democratic right. The question, then, is not whether colleges and universities have a role to play but what action this moment demands of them.

Federal law already requires institutions, under the 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, to make a “good faith” effort to provide voter registration materials. Yet too many institutions do the minimum, only distributing forms and then stepping back when students encounter obstacles. During the 2022 midterm elections, students from Ivy League Votes, a nonpartisan campus-based student civic engagement initiative, reported that some administrators told them it was “beneficial” to face voting barriers in college so they could “get used to” them after graduation.

This posture echoes what Martin Luther King Jr. condemned in his 1957 “Give Us the Ballot” speech as the “high blood pressure of words and anemia of deeds.” Colleges and universities cannot afford that disconnect. They must actively promote and defend voting rights as a core part of their missions.

That means stating clearly the importance of electoral participation in the educational process—my institution, Bard College, does this in a letter to every incoming first-year student. It means working to protect students’ right to vote. It means committing institutional resources to build a durable voting infrastructure that involves both students and campus leadership. Institutions can take additional steps:

• Adopt comprehensive plans, such as those developed by the national, nonpartisan initiative ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, which integrates voter registration and turnout into campus life, including structured opportunities for every eligible student to register to vote and develop a voting plan, particularly if they are voting absentee. 
• Provide transportation to the polls where needed and advocate for accessible centrally located on-campus polling sites. 
• Protect the rights of student and faculty advocates working on voting issues and, when necessary, support legal efforts to defend those rights. 
• Engage in broader advocacy to remove systemic barriers to student voting at the local, state, and national levels, and defend initiatives, such as NSLVE, that provide essential data on student participation.

The urgency is unmistakable. Voting rights overall are currently under the most significant threat since the end of Jim Crow, and college students are encountering mounting barriers not seen at this scale since before the Twenty-Sixth Amendment was adopted in 1971, lowering the voting age to eighteen. Institutions must place voting at the center of their democratic mission and ensure their actions match their rhetoric.

Illustration by Sian Roper